


The Great Academy Dance Off

by Kimra



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game)
Genre: Costumes, Crack, Devils, Fluff and Crack, Friendship, Halloween, M/M, Metafiction, Party, Were-Creatures, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-13 04:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21238214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimra/pseuds/Kimra
Summary: Halloween is coming up again. Janet has plans. Bucky is just confused. Steve is just going with the flow.





	The Great Academy Dance Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meatball42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/gifts).

> Congrats on your treat. I don’t think this is what you wanted, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

“All right students.” Fury announces, “as you all know Halloween is fast approaching” a few of the crowd make confused or surprised noises because they either a) do not actually know what Halloween is or b) do not actually follow a calendar in the strictest sense, “and as has been demonstrated every year since the Academy opened unaccountable things may occur.”

“Is it dating?” Janet buzzes from the above crowd excitedly.

Fury pulls a pained face, “We do not yet know what will happen. But no, there will be no dating.”

Janet settles back onto the ground with a pout, crossing her arms, “Figures.” She grumbles. Natasha pats her shoulder in awkward conciliation and Janet glomps her because when is she ever going to pass up a chance to affectionately cuddle her favourite Russian spy?

“What we do know is that it will be expensive, and probably involve dancing.” Fury continues, and the crowd as a whole grumbles agreement, most of them are still wearing the same clothes they arrived in. Janet personally is offended by everyone’s lack of style options but she consoles herself by changing costumes as often as possible. Today she’s wearing her Mobster outfit because she’s feeling like fighting the man. “I expect at least twenty of you to participate and the rest of you will not be allowed to participate at all.”

“M.O.D.O.K. wishes to dance!”

“Well you can’t.” Fury snaps right back, “You’ll have to keep trying to grope Janet on the bench while she’s distracted, except she’s going to be one of the participants, so she’ll be busy.”

“I am?” She flutters into the air in excitement and Fury levels her with a bored look.

“Is there ever an event you are not central to?” He checks, and she puffs up excitedly, but does not dignify that with an answer. She absolutely should be the centre of all events and they all know it.

“All right students, whatever you were doing before I interrupted you, you can get back to it.” Fury dismisses.

“I don’t remember what I was doing.” Colleen admits to Jessica Jones.

Jessica shrugs, “Probably just walking around in circles like the rest of us.”

“Can’t we go in buildings now?” Colleen checks, and Jessica realises that yeah, that update did happen. They both wonder off to disappears into the dorm for a while.

“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Bucky tells Steve as Steve does another fifty reps on the bench press. He likes to watch the way Steve’s muscles strain with each push but never tremble. It’s mesmerising to see exactly how in control he is at all times.

“With what?” Steve asks.

“Halloween?” He says tentatively, feeling stupid for not knowing what everyone is talking about.

“Oh that.” Steve hits his twenty-five-minute mark and like clockwork stands up and puts the equipment away, which is a shame as far as Bucky is concerned because he’s been robbed of a good view. “Every year this place goes pear shaped at Halloween. It’s actually kind of fun.”

“Hmm.” Bucky agrees distracted. “You should do more presses.”

Steve pauses with a weight half off the bar and looks perplexed, “But I did 25 minutes, I can’t go over.”

“You could do another 25 minutes?” He could stand to stand about and enjoy this for another 25 minutes. Steve hesitates, then shrugs and resets the bar. Steve gets a longer work out and Bucky gets a whole extra 25 minutes of watching Steve work out. It’s a win on all fronts.

They get invaded one month before Halloween exactly, and no-ones all that surprised although Janet does a good impression of being surprised and outraged.

“All right,” She tells the students who’ve been arbitrarily chosen to participate in the event. Most of them are in costume already. It’s possible Sam hasn’t taken his Penguin costume off since he first got it. “Here’s how it goes,” she says in her gangster voice, because it’s time for business and the outfit has a stunning cut, “we gotta dance.”

“I for one am surprised and shocked by this.” Natasha drawls on behalf of the crowd. Janet shoots her a pout but keeps going.

“If we don’t sleep, continue to dance constantly for an entire month we will-“ she pulls out a note from her pocket, “defeat the invading school.”

“Oh, are we getting new recruits?” Tony pops his shades down to ask.

“No.”

Everyone stops and stares at her, Janet flattens out the paper on the picnic bench between them.

“We’re not getting any new recruits.” She repeats.

“Are you sure?” Steve inches the paper towards him, but she slaps his hand. “It’s just, we usually get one every week-“

“No recruits.” She tells them all firmly. “We’re just gonna dance and defeat them, and get some costumes along the way.”

Bucky puts his hand up cautiously, and everyone feels a little sad and a little bit chastised for interrupting without putting their hands up.

“Bucky?” Janet prompts.

“Costumes?” He asks hesitantly, and everyone’s disbelief swings to him.

“Excuse me?” Sam gawps, “do you think I wear a penguin outfit all the time?”

Bucky squints at the other man thoughtfully, “You do wear it all the time.”

“And Steve?” Tony leans in excited. “He’s a werewolf sometimes.”

“Often.” Jessica Jones amended.

“Often.”

“Who am I to question Steve’s life choices?” Bucky defends, and everyone feels a little bit sadder but amused.

“I hope he turns into a dragon this Halloween.” Tony tells the room, “I can’t wait to see how zen he is over that.”

“He already turns into a dinosaur, what makes a dragon any different?” Natasha questions.

“Size.” Which… true.

“So the plan.” Janet brings them back to her paper, and they all debrief on their schedule.

It’s day seven of dancing, and Bucky is wearing a taco. He’s not sure how it happened, he certainly didn’t agree to it. But one minute he and Janet had been dancing their shift and the next he’s been wiping sweat off his neck while Steve and Jessica Drew took to the floor and the next he was wearing a taco.

“Nice.” Janet admires, “You can still dance in that right?” And the answer is yes, which she says is good because they aren’t good enough friends yet to get more perks. Bucky isn’t sure why he didn’t get paired with Steve. “Don’t worry about it,” she tells him with a firm pat on his back, “we’re gonna be such good friends by the end of this month and then forget about it the next day.”

“Wait- what?” He tries, but she’s shrunk down and flown off. He considers trying to figure it out, but instead he takes a seat by the haunted houses graveyard and watches Steve and Jessica dance the night away. Steve is a good dancer, with all the practice he has at Club A he had better be. But he always dances best with a partner. Even if it’s the monster mash.

“He better be shirtless this year.” Natasha says as she sprawls out on a gold tile beside him. “It’s a disappointment every year when he isn’t.”

Bucky picks at the trim of a piece of lettuce and agrees that any minute Steve isn’t shirtless is a sad minute. With that in mind he goes to write a song about Steve’s muscles. 

It’s the end of the fourth week, when everyone’s feeling good about their friendships with each other that Janet gathers them all into a little glitch in the time fog and says, “Alright,” she’s dressed as the devil, all cute and evil mixed into one, and she’s got an unholy light in her eyes.

“What are you planning Janet?” Natasha asks in her matching angel outfit. It’s got great big fluffy wings and is the most ostentatious thing any of them have seen her wear before.

“Fury’s not letting us date.” She starts, and even Tony tunes in. He puts the little reactor core he’s working on into the leg of the horse he’s pretending to ride and trots over. For some reason he holds onto the reigns of the horse the whole way, compulsion perhaps.

“What are we doing?” He demands, and how many robots do you need?”

Natasha elbows him in the stomach and both Jessica’s roll their eyes. Drew is decked out in a ghostbusters replica outfit with ‘exterminator’ scrawled across the back on a peeling sticker, Jones is in a female pro-wrestler outfit, boots, championship belt and all, and looks like she’s ready to throw down.

“No robots,” Steve begs, and he hasn’t had his outfit changed yet so he’s just in his usual Captain America garb, but occasionally he changes it up with a werewolf or rocker outfit. But he keeps coming back to his uniform.

“You are all idiots.” A German voice says nearby, and the all look past the fog to the cage just beside them.

“Who parked him there?” Sam demands, offended that Red Skull is eavesdropping on them. He’s in a Robin leotard, because someone forgot about copyrights and it was hilarious to see him in the little half cape.

“We’re all over here, I believe it was aesthetically pleasing.” A louder voice interrupts, and that’s Wilson Fisk.

“Okay,” Tony interrupts before whoever else out there can start to add their voices. A snark off with a bunch of caged villains was never a good day. They had nowhere else to go and it could get nasty. “Why are we idiots.”

“Nothing’s stopping you from dating.” Carnage hissed, “Only your thick skulls.”

“But the game-“ Steve protested, ever the stickler for rules.

“The next person to mention dating in my hearing range will be the first person I murder when I’m out of here.” Hela drawled, and instead of shutting anyone off it set all the villains off into a shouting match at each other.

The students took it as an opportunity to look at each other.

“They aren’t wrong.” Janet said, little devil fork pointing at them all. “Nothing’s stopping us from actually dating. It just won’t mean anything.”

“I want it to mean something.” Bucky said around his taco shell.

“It’ll mean something to you,” Singularity assured decked from head to toe in sparkly purple unicorn. “That’s what matters, isn’t it?” She smiles wide, and the students all agree.

“We’ve all raised our different friendships to the max, so there are no rules from here on out.”

“So what now?” Steve asks inching over towards Bucky.

“Now?” Janet grinned, “We dance!”

Steve dips Bucky in a ridiculous dance move they probably shouldn’t know how to do yet, but damn it all it’s fun and Bucky wasn’t a fan of the dancing at first, but it’s nice, being swept away by Steve Rogers.

“You think the others are going to be okay? Picking their own dates?” Bucky asks, he’s not overly concerned, but he needs something to say.

“I think Tony’s going to be a man torn. But right now I’m just happy you said yes to another dance.”

Bucky feels soft and squishy inside as he stares up at Steve’s smiling face. “I would never say no to you, you’re the sun in my life.” He promises, and Steve pulls him back up as the dance ends.

“Another song?” He beams.

“Not yet, but it will be.”

Then in one second to the next Steve’s outfit changes, and he stands, bare chested in a fireman’s outfit. Except Bucky’s sure the lack of a top must be a fire hazard.

“Yes!” Tony shouts from off to the right of them.

“I knew Santa was listening.” Natasha agrees happily.

“Wow mama.” Janet adds helpfully.

Steve pretends he’s not embarrassed.

“This just in,” Newscaster Supreme says from her desk, “Avengers Academy has once again defeated the looming evil of- aliens?” She looks suddenly bored. “Couldn’t it have been Halloween related at all?” There is no response so after a dramatic huff she continues. “There were minor casualties including yours truly when I saw Captain America dressed up like a fireman in a calendar. And one unfortunate class member who shall remain anonymous who was with Amora when her Halloween costume finally arrived.” She folds her hands and reads the next line. “And I would like to say that despite what she says she certainly worked that trash bag.” 

“This is Newscaster Supreme signing out and wondering why no-one invited me to dance when I’ve been a student at the school for months.”


End file.
